Russell the ultimate boxing referee

ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY, MAY 25 AND THEREAFTER - This photo taken Feb. 27, 2014 shows Rahgaleak Bartee, 12, helped with protective gear before boxing in the gym of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) after-school center in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood of Washington. Backed by a multi-year, $28 million Education Department grant, the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) vows to tackle generational poverty with a fresh approach -- if a parent’s level of education improves, so does a child’s prospects. In Kenilworth-Parkside, helping the children get a good education is a primary focus, but it’s the adults they must first engage. And many of them are skeptical. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
The Associated Press

ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY, MAY 25 AND THEREAFTER - This photo taken Feb. 27, 2014 shows Rahgaleak Bartee, 12, helped with protective gear before boxing in the gym of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) after-school center in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood of Washington. Backed by a multi-year, $28 million Education Department grant, the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) vows to tackle generational poverty with a fresh approach -- if a parent’s level of education improves, so does a child’s prospects. In Kenilworth-Parkside, helping the children get a good education is a primary focus, but it’s the adults they must first engage. And many of them are skeptical. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Unless you’re around that square ring, it’s difficult to fully appreciate the cunning, the violence, the swiftness -- most of all, the heart -- of a boxer by trade. Or what it is that creates the most electric moments I’ve felt in sports.

“Sometimes just the air created by a punch knocks me backward,” Pat Russell is saying around bites of lasagna.

And Russell is a referee, not the guy getting his ears cauliflowered. The San Diegan, Vietnam veteran and retired District Attorney investigator (after 31 years) can only estimate he’s officiated 1,500 fights since he started in 1980.

“Since Vietnam, I haven’t thought about body counts, but I’d say that figure is close,” Russell says. “I’ve always thought the only fight that matters is the next one.”

He’s 66 now, but Russell isn’t about to stop. There’s something about the sweet science, the characters, the skill, the shard of depravity, the gravity of it that keeps sucking you in. If you believe in it the primordial pond, life forms crawled out it beating the hell out of one another.

Anyway, Russell, an upstanding member of the California Boxing Hall of Fame, can’t tear himself away the game he loves. He’ll be working in the Four Points Sheraton Hotel’s ring late this afternoon during the annual Battle of the Badges, 10 bouts featuring fighters from local law enforcement agencies, including the Navy and Marines. Proceeds benefit the National City Community Youth Athletic Center.

“Save a kid, save the world,” Russell says.

Every fight, pro, amateur, or rank amateur, still remains a fight. There is something different to every one.

Russell points to April’s Lucas Matthysse-John Molina super welterweight bout he refereed in Carson’s StubHub Center -- probably the best fight of the year thus far -- as a reason why he loves it so.

“Things that keep me going happened in that fight,” he says. “Molina doesn’t have a lot of skills and he gets into this fight with the much more skilled Matthysse, who’s like a viper, and Molina knocks him down twice. Matthysse comes back and knocks him down; Molina makes the count just before the end of the 10th round.

“It’s then you make the decision. Molina seemed done. He’d fought a great fight; given all he can give. It’s the razor’s edge for me. The doctor says he’s OK to go, but it’s my decision. I have to be careful. Molina walks out to the center of the ring and you can see his heart. You can feel the electricity. It makes the hair go up on the back of my neck when I think about it. It’s one of the ultimate moments in sports.”

Pat’s right. It is.

“Then he got knocked down again, so I stopped it right away,” Russell says. “But he was a man; he went down swinging.

“I saw Molina the next week and he told me he really appreciated what I did. “I told him: 'You don’t understand. You went from a professional fighter to a man. It was when people saw inside of you, saw your soul.'”